Bad Home Page Links? Google May Boost Rank Pages Instead?

A WebmasterWorld thread has an SEO sharing some experiments he is playing with. Before I summarize his experiment, I want you all to keep in mind that this stuff is hard to test when the Penguin algorithm has not been updated in six months and when there are tons of other variables floating around.

That being said, let's have fun.

This SEO said that he created a new site and pointed a nice number of junky links to the home page. He then waited and noticed that although the links were pointed to the home page, the home page didn't rank for the keywords it targeted. Instead, the internal pages ranked well.

He wrote:

The interesting thing is: google refuses to rank the home page for these terms, they rank deeper pages like widgetexample.com/red

The SEO continues to explain:

Google ranking pages other than the pages being targeted by junk links for the keywords we are targeting. It feels like it's a "loophole" in the algo. Almost like they know that you are creating junk links so they're not going to rank the page for the keyword but then something bigger kicks in and say this site must be about "keyword" so lets find a page to display.

Of course, I see plenty of webmasters complaining about the exact opposite situation as well. :)

Do you think this is a loophole or just the site waiting for the algorithm to catch up to it?